


Carry On, Boys

by DeanstielsDaughter



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, M/M, Season Fifteen Ending, Season/Series 15, Series Finale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-19
Updated: 2020-11-19
Packaged: 2021-03-10 02:54:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,565
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27636428
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DeanstielsDaughter/pseuds/DeanstielsDaughter
Summary: Supernatural: Carry On by Chuck Shurley.No, scratch that, Supernatural: Carry On by Dean and Sam Winchester.This is how it ends.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester, Eileen Leahy/Sam Winchester
Comments: 2
Kudos: 42





	Carry On, Boys

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted to go for the theory everyone has going around of a "choose your own ending" style for the series finale. This is my interpretation of the other ending. Enjoy.
> 
> *I chose to change the title from the original to what it is now because I have new plans for that title, sorry for any confusion*

It felt like the beginning of some bad dystopian novel. That much they all knew. The weight of everything hadn’t really hit Dean until that moment when he, Jack, and Sam had all stood in the middle of a dead silent four-way intersection in Hastings, Minnesota.

They hadn’t known for sure, but they could feel it in their bones that every human being in the world was gone. Every single one, but them. All their effort had still been for nothing. All because Chuck had written his story. His last sentences carved out in an eternal book with a heavy pen and weary paper.

And there was something about Sam losing hope that had Dean and Jack feeling as though there was nothing left of themselves to give either.

It had taken everything, every last ounce, to pull themselves up by the bootstraps and try again. Then again, was there really a point to “again”? The Winchesters had tried talking to Chuck by themselves, surrendering and giving Him that “happy ending” He so desperately craved, but He hadn’t taken it. He’d cast their mercy aside like a carcass that a predator was finally done tearing to shreds after devouring every inch of itself it had left.

It was honestly how Dean and Sam felt, so it was fitting.

Neither brother had originally bothered to ask the kid how he’d felt.

But then, there wasn’t time, because the kid suddenly had an inkling that he felt something, and the brothers were in the car once again.

He’d taken the brothers in the direction of Michael, and they’d found the archangel seeking refuge in a church in his name. He’d asked what he could do for them. The brothers had expected a fight, a lack of desire for revenge even, or for Michael to simply just run away again and leaves the mud monkeys to rot. It hadn’t gone that way, though. Michael had been shown the truth by Castiel, when the angel had still been on Earth alive, and he had run the first time.

This time, he just asked what he could do.

***

Michael had somehow managed to open God’s Death Book, after a few failed attempts, but the pages were unreadable. At least by the means of any mere human.

Luckily, the Winchesters weren’t mere.

Sam had spent his time flipping pages and translating. Dean had spent his drinking and pretending he understood the lore placed in front of his eyes. Jack had spent his thinking deeply about everything. Michael had watched from a distance, trying to find his own answers to their questions.

It had felt like an eternity, the time spent looking over books. The time spent trying to find an answer. Jack had watched Sam and Dean wrack their brains, claw at every bottle of beer or Daniels that crossed their paths and shed every last ounce of exhaustion within them to try and get to the bottom of the end.

The end. Those two words had haunted Jack the moment he’d heard them from Chuck’s mouth. Jack had laid in bed every night and thought about it all, and even now, as he sat at the table doing research like the others, it all haunted him. The moment of his existence, the time of his death, and the sheer magic of his last resurrection. Death had wanted him to be the savior. To be the grand finale. Yet even that had failed. Even that hadn’t been the ending.

It had all led to this moment, and yet, what did it matter? What did it mean?

Why did he matter?

It hit him then, but he didn’t have a moment to express what he’d been thinking. Just as he’d tried to open his mouth, Sam had walked into the room and announced the spell they had to use. He’d deciphered the book.

Sam had looked at Jack. Jack had looked at Dean. Dean at Michael.

It was time.

***

The world around Castiel was dark black and never-ending.

His footsteps echoed in the distant nothingness as the angel took a few steps forward from where he’d landed originally and looked around. It was eerily silent for something that had just consumed so much.

Billie had crash landed alongside Castiel the moment they’d arrived but vanished the moment she’d looked his way. The inky black substance they were surrounded by had risen up from the ground and engulfed her.

She’d barely managed to let out a scream before her existence blinked away like a shooting star.

Castiel stood in place, turning around in a circle, perplexed. He had been here before, but it had been Jack who’d prayed. Jack who’d woken him up. He’d yet to hear a voice, a sound.

So, why was he awake now?

“Clarence,” a voice piped up and Castiel spun around quickly to see Meg standing about ten feet away from him.

“Meg…” Castiel let out her name like a failed breath.

“That boy,” Meg replied. “When they made him come here, he made it loud.”

Castiel cocked his head in confusion.

“The Empty doesn’t like it when it’s loud,” Meg said. “It didn’t like his presence.”

“Is that why I’m awake?” Castiel asked. “Is that why you’re awake?”

“She’s not the only one.”

Another familiar voice and Castiel turned to look. His heart skipped a beat.

Crowley stood before both of them. There was a small ripple to the right and another figure appeared. Gabriel. Another ripple. Balthazar. Castiel gasped, turning in circles, and watching as more and more faces appeared. Faces he’d looked upon over the years, and faces he’d also watched leave the Earth.

All for the Winchesters. All for the mission.

All for the story.

“Lucifer woke up first,” Meg explained, looking around at the mention of his name, as though the nothingness would come up from the ground and take her too.

“And where is he now?” Castiel asked.

“The Empty didn’t like his attitude,” Meg replied. “So, it ate him.”

“It…ate him.” Castiel concluded, giving Meg both a confused and grateful look.

“It makes those who keep it awake, disappear.” Balthazar mentioned.

“But we figured something out.” Gabriel spoke up. Castiel stared at his brother with great pain in his eyes. Yet another person the angel had failed.

“It doesn’t like it when all of us are awake,” Meg concluded. “It can’t get all of us. Not if we make it as loud as that boy did.”

Castiel looked at the former demon as though she had grown a second head. Then, she had grown one. Castiel had taken a step back as Meg had closed her eyes and flickered in and out of being until half of her had become what she’d been on Earth.

And the other half, well that was something otherworldly.

Finally, after a few more moments, Castiel gazed upon Meg’s true form. The three smoky inky black heads with glaring red eyes moved like the waves in the ocean as they stared upon the others. Meg’s smoky black smooth body moved like a snake and the three-pronged tail at the end of her body flicked back and forth. She spoke not again, but there was a surge of power.

Somewhere in the distance, Castiel heard a deep growl. A growl that turned into a banshee like scream.

“It didn’t like that very much, now did it.” Gabriel smirked and his eyes turned white before, his vessel too, started to dissolve.

Castiel watched as the others, slowly having come into consciousness, slowly flickered, and changed. Angels and demons, all becoming what they were created to be. The animalistic, powerful beings who had come into creation millions of years ago. They now stood all around Castiel, causing surges of power. Causing echoes throughout the darkness. The yelling grew louder. The growling grew deeper. Still, angels and demons continued to rise from the depths and take form in the empty air.

Castiel stared in awe and Meg approached him slowly. She reached a silky black, shapeless hand out to Castiel’s vessel’s cheek and cupped it. Her six red eyes glowed like embers in a fire. Her mouth was a thin line, but she spoke as they had in the past. Enochian with a demon accent.

_“Take us home. This is not how our story ends, not after all this. We can’t let Him end it like this.”_

She let go of Castiel’s cheek. The angel took a long look around him at the endless circle of dead ancient creatures. Both Heaven’s and Hell’s servants, working together for something. It was unheard of. It was cosmic.

It was a true climax to a good powerful story. 

Castiel took a deep breath, ignoring the cries of those on the outer edges, being swallowed by ink and nothingness. They had yet to shed their human skin and to walk as their true selves once more. Those closest to him turned at the sound of a piercing scream. The Empty was angry. The Empty was coming, and this time there would be no remorse.

Yet, something still slowed it down. Something still prevented it from swallowing them all whole, all at once.

“ _The Empty doesn’t like it when it’s loud.”_

Jack had gone off in this place. Jack had made it loud.

Jack had made it weak…

Castiel’s eyes went wide as he listened to the hum of power that was expelled from those who’d already managed to turn. The demons screeched. The angels buzzed and rang. The Empty swallowed one by one.

A piece of the air flickered, near the center, but not quite there. A surge of power, cracking the foundation.

A door to the other side, from whence he'd came.

Castiel closed his eyes and light begun to flood him.

***

Sam and Dean were laughing.

The sky had opened up. The wind was shaking every tree, every fiber of Earth’s being. The atoms surrounding in the air were heavy. With one more snap of His fingers, Chuck could end it all, start another new world.

Something stopped him. The looks on the brothers’ faces. That same contempt that Cain and Abel had shown right before they’d been forced to carry out Chuck’s will.

Chuck felt anger boil up inside of Him. Why were they laughing? They were finally at his final mercy. He was about to write His final line. Turn His final page. Michael was dead, killed by Chuck Himself moments earlier. The Winchesters had been hit senseless, every bone in their bodies broken, and their spirits too long before this moment.

Yet here they stood before Him beaten and broken, and they had the audacity to laugh.

“What could possibly be so funny to the two of you?” Chuck asked.

“Over ten years ago,” Sam started. “I went to college. You controlled our lives from the beginning, so now I know that you sent me there. It was part of your story, no doubt. Well, I took a creative writing course. A little meta if you ask me, making your character live out your dream, but that’s okay. I took the course anyway. You wanna know what I learned in that class, Chuck? What I took away from it about characters in a story?”

Chuck cocked his head, confused.

“No matter what a writer does,” Sam continued. “No matter what they write, their characters never end up following the rules, the path, the writer laid out for them. They end up becoming their own thing. Controlling their own fates and endings.”

The Winchesters watched the color drain from Chuck’s face. Chuck turned to leave, to get away, but it was there he saw Jack standing on the edge of the woods. Staring at him like a wolf would.

“The characters decide the story,” Sam finished. “No matter what the writer lays out. And all the writer can do is go along with it. So yeah, Chuck, you may be in charge overall, but we’ve always ran the show, not you, and I think, deep down, you knew that.”

Before Chuck could say a word, Jack was across the way in a split second, hands on the side of Chuck’s head, and a wave of power like none before blasted through Chuck and Jack alike. The Winchesters stumbled as the air around them slowed down and the sky sealed itself. The water stopped pounding onto the sand nearby and instead, lapped at its edges.

Chuck lay on the ground, in shock.

Jack smiled and snapped his fingers. The brothers were whole again. The world surrounding the three of them was calm.

“You lose, Chuck.” Dean breathed out.

“You see,” Sam explained as he cast God’s Death Book down into the dirt beside him. Chuck gingerly flipped the pages, seeing no words, nothing but white blank paper. “Only Death can read your book. So, we had to think of something else.”

“We knew Michael would pass along a message to you,” Dean continued. “So, we did what any good writer does, and fed him a red herring.”

“There was no spell,” Sam said. “There was no magic answer, at least we thought there wasn’t. Until, one day, you just got a little too cocky in your writing session and you accidentally made a plot hole.”

“You see,” Dean looked over at Jack. “There’s a reason you outlawed the Nephilim. Because they’re the only thing powerful enough to take you to your knees.”

Jack gave a bigger smile the brothers’ way, and even though their hearts were weary, and their souls felt beyond broken, it was done. The final chapter was written.

And the only thing left to do, was walk away.

So, they did, kicking up dirt and rocks in the face of the former God as they went.

***

The four-way intersection was still quiet when the trio reached it again.

Jack took the biggest first steps of his life out of the Impala’s back seat and onto the asphalt. The world around him somehow felt lighter, freer. He felt a tug at his chest, and he knew that Amara felt the same as he did.

It felt as though nothing had never been tainted at all. A blank page, to start anew.

Only, this time, this world would be the final draft. Once and for all.

Jack snapped his fingers, the people returned, and the book closed shut, never to be edited again. Sam’s phone buzzed with missed calls and text messages. He felt his breath hitch at the sight of Eileen’s words, even if they were that of confusion.

Dean tried to ignore the lack of a certain message he’d been hoping to receive. He knew it was a long shot, but for the first-time faith and believing had worked, and he’d decided it was better late than never to test it out.

“You did it kid.” Dean said, breathlessly, and Jack turned to see Sam and Dean staring at him in wonder and leaning against the back of the Impala. Jack smiled and nodded. All was quiet for a moment, until Jack spoke again.

“I always wondered,” Jack said, gaining the full attention of the brothers once more. “From the moment I breathed until a few moments ago, why I was here. I mean, to be born of such power and to have no idea what to do with it. It’s almost cruel.”

Sam gave his awkward nod, but there was happiness leeched inside of it. Dean gave a small, curt smile.

“I think I know why I’m here now.” Jack smiled proudly.

“You’re not coming home with us,” Dean concluded. “Are you?”

“Not this time,” Jack shook his head, admiring the work laid out for him all around. There were problems to fix. Wrongs to right. New stories to create.

Jack wanted to be the one to do it right this time. No more starting over.

“Home is all around me,” Jack said, observing his hands as he moved them through the air. “It’s hard to explain, but I am everywhere now.”

“What should we call you now that you’re…you know?” Sam asked.

Jack thought about it for a moment. He had had many titles from the moment of his conception: son, Nephilim, abomination, ender of worlds, weirdo, freak of nature, and the list went on and on, but something about his new title made him feel an inkling a hubris the moment it tickled his tongue. Instead of letting it go free, making it real, he simply chuckled, hung his head, and then raised his hand in the fashion he always did before introducing himself.

“Jack,” Jack said with conviction in his dopey, innocent way of being. “You can call me Jack.”

Sam and Dean moved to say something, but words never came. Instead of words came pride, happiness, and a new surge of hope they thought they’d never felt.

And they felt it long after Jack turned away and walked off into nothingness, leaving them by the backside of their ’67 Impala.

***

A flurry of phone calls and explanations later and everyone was at the bunker within the day. Sam and Dean looked around at their friends. No, it was more than just friends in the room, it was family.

They were surrounded by family, and for the first time, they could be happy about it.

At least, most of their family was among them.

Dean sat in the corner, drinking a beer, and feeling like a shadow on the wall in a room. The other hunters chatted, some even seeing and meeting one another for the first time. Sam and Eileen kept the alcohol coming, sliding bottles left and right down the long map table. Smiles plastered upon the faces the whole time. Dean had even seen a hint of Sam’s arm intertwined around Eileen’s waist.

It made his heart ache.

_“I love you.”_

It had been so much more that time. So much more than when Castiel had addressed all of the Winchesters. Dean knew it. Hell, he was sure even Death had heard that one and laughed at their ridiculousness.

Why hadn’t he said anything back? Why had he just frozen up?

Dean sighed, taking another swig of his beer, and gazing up at the high ceiling. His eyes closed and he pictured that moment. The tears in Castiel’s eyes. The Empty coming and swallowing him like a hungry eternal snake. The handprint that was still crusted on Dean’s shirt, hanging in his bedroom closet where it would stay like a green cotton tombstone.

Dean’s throat hurt from trying not to cry.

Although, suddenly, there was a feeling. An unmatched energy in the room that caused a hush to fall upon the entire bunker. All of the hunters silenced themselves. All of the beer paused its consumption.

The world stopped, or so it seemed.

The iron door to the bunker closed and footsteps echoed on the metal floor. Dean’s heart lurched forward into his flesh and chest the moment his gaze traveled up. Sam’s eyes blew wide and Eileen’s mouth hung open.

The hunters parted like the Red Sea as the figure from above descended the steps into the main room of the bunker. Dean leapt to his feet, spilling, and dropping his beer in the process. His eyes stung from the lack of tears that now pricked in their corners.

Memories came back to Dean in a flash. All of them, all at once, but one particular one came last. A brisk night so long ago in an abandoned barn with every sigil and symbol known to man painted on its walls. The Bobby from their world, still alive, by his side and shooting bullets at a man that couldn’t be moved.

A man that had never wavered, even in his first words to Dean.

“How did you…” Dean gasped.

“They helped me out,” Castiel explained as all the hunters in the room stared at the pair. “All our allies, the demons and angels, they…helped me escape.”

“How?” Dean asked. “Why?”

“They told me that any angel who’d braved the depths of Hell,” Castiel explained. “And fell in every way possible, yet still tried everything to rise above, deserved to do just that. He deserved a chance to raise the Righteous Man from this Perdition he’d found himself in.”

Before Castiel could say another word, Dean had thrown his entire body at the angel and gripped him tight. He’d pressed his face into Castiel’s shoulder and then looked him in the eyes. His hand had reached up to cup Castiel’s cheek in the same fashion Meg’s had and Dean’s forehead finally came to rest on Castiel’s as his eyes closed and a smile crept across his face.

“Yeah,” Dean chuckled, recalling his same words back from that night. “Thanks for that.”

One by one, the hunters raised their bottles into the air, letting out cries of exaltation and triumph. Sam and Eileen were second to last, Sam holding her close to him, and crying out louder than the rest.

“To the start of our new stories!” Sam yelled. “May they be all we’ve ever asked for, and more!”

“Here, here!” the hunters chorused.

Dean rose his bottle, forehead still on Castiel’s, and broke into a smile just as the angel did too.

Freedom had never felt so good.

**Author's Note:**

> Read and Review!
> 
> I wanted to get this out before everything is canon and nothing can be left up to interpretation or chance anymore. I cannot believe that the final episode airs tonight and I am both parts excited and morose about it. I have been with these boys since I was sixteen and now, I am twenty-four years old. What a journey it's been. The Winchesters have seen me through dark times, happy times, and times in between when I just needed to hear the rumble of an Impala’s engine, two boys saying "bitch" and "jerk" or the flap of an angel’s wings. It has been a long, wonderful journey, and though there were bumps in the road this was still a great story to be told. I leave you here with this, just as the writers leave us with the real ending tonight, and though I will still continue to write for this fandom long after this show ends with my own stories and interpretations, it has been quite a ride before tonight. 
> 
> With that, I say the following: Carry on wayward sons and daughters, AKF, and don’t forget to give ‘em Hell along the way. 
> 
> And finally, thank you, my readers and fans, for everything.


End file.
